Collective Nouns:Rules that you didn't know

Collective Noun:A collective noun is the name of a group of persons or things.
Example:Army,Committee,crowd,feet,team,jury,cattle.

When a group is considered as a single unit ,the collective noun  takes a singular verb and is substituted by singular pronoun.

Look at these sentences carefully:

• The jury have given their decision(Incorrect).
• The jury has given its decision(Correct).

(Jury=singular,has=singular helping verb,its=singular pronoun).

(It's a single unit because all the members are doing same thing at the same time).

When the members are acting as individuals, the collective noun is plural and requires plural verbs and pronouns.

• The jury was divided in its opinions.(Incorrect)
• The jury were divided in their opinions.(Correct)

(Jury=plural;were=plural helping verb;their=plural pronoun)

(Here every member of jury has different opinion so it's not a single unit.)


Got confused?

Whenever you cannot decide if a collective noun is singular or plural, try to make collective noun as plural noun.How?
Example.

Use jury members in place of jury,players instead of team etc.

• >>The jury members have given their decision.

Got it?

Note:Some words like Police are always plural.

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